In the National Intelligence Estimate, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, produced in November
2007, the 16 US intelligence
services expressed the consensus view that Iran hadn’t got an active nuclear
weapons programme at that time.That is
still their view today.

As he revealed in his memoir Decision Points, instead of being pleased that Iran was almost
certainly not developing nuclear weapons, President Bush was “angry” that his
intelligence services had expressed this view.He was “angry” because it cut the ground from under his efforts to gain
international support for what he termed “dealing with Iran”, which clearly
went beyond ensuring that it did not possess nuclear weapons.The NIE had a big impact, he concluded – and
not a good one.

His full comments on the NIE in Decision Points are as follows:

In November 2007, the intelligence
community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear
program. It confirmed that, as we suspected, Iran had operated a secret nuclear
weapons program in defiance of its treaty obligations. It also reported that,
in 2003, Iran
had suspended its covert effort to design a warhead – considered by some to be
the least challenging part of building a weapon.Despite the fact that Iran was testing missiles that could be used as
a delivery system and had announced its resumption of uranium enrichment, the
NIE opened with an eye-popping declaration: “We judge with high confidence that
in fall 2003, Tehran
halted its nuclear weapons program.”

The NIE’s
conclusion was so stunning that I felt certain it would immediately leak to the
press. As much as I disliked the idea, I decided to declassify the key findings
so that we could shape the news stories with the facts. The backlash was
immediate. Ahmadinejad hailed the NIE as “a great
victory.”Momentum for new sanctions
faded among the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese. As New York Times journalist David Sanger rightly put it, “The new
intelligence estimate relieved the international pressure on Iran – the same
pressure that the document itself claimed had successfully forced the country
to suspend its weapons ambitions.”

In January 2008, I took a trip to the
Middle East, where I tried to reassure leaders that we remained committed to
dealing with Iran.
Israel
and our Arab allies found themselves in a rare moment of unity. Both were
deeply concerned about Iran
and furious with the United
States about the NIE. In Saudi Arabia, I
met with King Abdullah and members of the Sudairi
Seven, the influential full brothers of the late King Fahd.

“Your Majesty, may I begin the
meeting?” I said. “I’m confident that every one of you believes that I wrote
the NIE as a way of avoiding taking action against Iran.”

No one said a word. The Saudis were
too polite to confirm their suspicion aloud.

“You have to understand our system,”
I said. “The NIE was produced independently by our intelligence community. I am
as angry about it as you are.”

The NIE didn’t just undermine
diplomacy.It also tied my hands on the
military side. There were many reasons I was concerned about undertaking a
military strike on Iran,
including its uncertain effectiveness and the serious problems it would create
for Iraq’s
fragile young democracy. But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using
the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence
community said had no active nuclear weapons program?

I don’t know why the NIE was written
the way it was. I wondered if the intelligence community was trying so hard to
avoid repeating its mistake on Iraq,
that it had underestimated the threat from Iran.I certainly hoped that intelligence analysts
weren’t trying to influence policy. Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big
impact – and not a good one.